


You weren't s'posed to be here

by ancient2new



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:14:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24111136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancient2new/pseuds/ancient2new
Summary: Catelyn saved her son Bran from the Assassin and thus gained the Valyrian Steel Dagger with which she went South.That is Canon Knowledge.But.....But what if Catelyn lost against the Assassin?What then?This is my short-story about what happened then.
Relationships: Catelyn Tully Stark & Ned Stark
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	You weren't s'posed to be here

You weren't s'posed to be here  
.............................................................  
"It's a mercy, he already is dead."

"No, no you can't" she said, while she then ran to the window to cry for help, only for him to yank her back. She desperately tried to free herself from his arm. He was a dirty, shabby man and gaunt and small of size, with stinking clothing but a well done dagger in his hand. She tugged at his arm and his free hand covered her mouth and she used this chance to sink her teeth into his palm, as to free herself. He tugged his hand away before she could fully clamp her teeth into his flesh but just when she opened her mouth then to scream, his hand came back up again to snap up her chin and thus close her mouth forcefully and deprive her of her scream.

He is attacked by a young wolfpup but kicks it away before it can do him harm, while at the same time he tightens his hold on the woman.

He cursed her but did not let go and only brought his dagger to her neck. She grabbed the blade with both hands as to shove it away and even though it cut open her palms and fingers and the blood was running freely, she would just not let go.

He cursed at her while they both struggled, she to not loose her slippery grip on the blade, he as to finally overpower her. Just when she thought that she might get a better chance again, for his hand that forced up her chin had lost most of its strength, just when she hoped that she might at least get the chance to scream for help, she unfortunately stumbled. Her right foot had been caught in the folds of her dress and the man's legs had been trying to capture her left leg and she lost her footing.

Both she and her attacker were falling forward and one of her hands let instinctively go of the dagger and shoot forward as if to stop her fall and in that moment, in that moment when only one of her hands was still on the blade, the attacker tugs up his dagger and forces it into her neck. Her bloody hand lost its slippery grip and she feels the blade entering the flesh of her neck and she feels pain but barely. More she feels anger and shock but mostly fear, not for herself no, for her boy. She fights, even though he had cut open her windpipe, she still fights for she must keep doing so. If she would give up, he would kill her boy next. She must....

His hand under her chin forces her head further back and he slices the dagger through her neck till he hits he spine. He still tugs her head even more back and where just a few moments ago there was a white neck, there is now only a huge open red wound.

She is dead. He follows immediately after though for the young direwolf had come up close to him again and clamps its teeth shut around the attacker's throat and rips it open.

................  
..................  
..................  
Bran opened his eyes in the same moment in which his pup killed the assassin, he felt the blood in his mouth while he woke up.

His felt so weak, so helpless and he could not get up. Why could be not get up anymore? Why did his mouth felt as if he had eaten too raw black sausage, like he had actually once done in the kitchen when he was younger? Why did he felt so horrible weak? Where was everyone? Where was everyone?

"MOTHER, FATHER, HELLO. HELP HELP ME, I CAN'T GET UP."

No one was there.

He screamed anew and barely a moment later the door flew open and people came inside, though at first he could not see them because he just could not get up, he was even to weak to lift his head.

He could shouting and more and evermore running feet and people coming into the room. More shouts and people were trying to get his pup from his bed but then Robb's voice shouted that they should leave the pup alone and care for mother.

What was with mother? He could see here, he had not heard her entering the room. Why did Robb told others to care for mother? Where was father and Jon and his other siblings? He couldn't hear their voices. He heard Robb crying while he gave order to be careful with mother and Theon shouting something, a bad word. Mother would surely not like to hear a word like this. Why should everyone be careful though, she would tell it to Theon herself.

There were so many people now in the room that he could see quite a lot of them, even though he still could not lift his head from his pillow. He could only see their backs though, everyone was standing with their back to him and looked down. What were they all looking at.

And then, just when he wanted to shout at everyones back to turn around to him, Maester Luwin was finally there and looked down on him and his hands touched him all over. Bran wanted to smile but Luwin looked so sad and shocked and his hands were shaking really badly.

Maester Luwin then looked away from him and shouted louder than Bran had ever heard him shout before and then Robb and Theon came running and Rodric too and all looked down at him.

Bran smiled up at them and wanted to ask them why they all looked so shocked and sad but in that moment Robb bowed down and kissed him on his brow and then Robb nearly crumbled down on his bed and started to cry. Bran looked to the others around his bed and all these grown up men had tears in their eyes too, even Theon. Ser Rodric was openly crying and that looked so unreal to Bran that he just was speechless.

..........  
Quite a time later, when Maester Luwin had given Bran some sleeping medicine and settled himself down by his brother's side, Robb went to the Great Hall were now two corpses laid down on tables.

One was of an unknown, shabby, small and stinking man who had been found with a Valyrian Dagger in his hand and the other corpse, the other brought Robb to tears when he just thought on it.

The other corpse was his mother, with an torn open throat. Ser Rodric told him that it was done different then the torn throat of the unknown man and when they could look at Bran's pups teeth, they saw that he was the cause for the man's wounds.

They had seen mother's hands and many of the Guards and Ser Rodric himself had told him that she must have grabbed the dagger's blade and then must have lost the grip on the blade and thus the man, the murderer of his mother had then slit open her throat and pulled back her neck to slit all the way to her spine.

Robb had vomited when they and Maester Luwin told him that. The Maester had been the one that told Robb that the blade had cut mothers finger right through to the bones and then Maester Luwin had went to Bran's Room and help Robb's little brother. They all swore to keep quiet about mother to Bran and of course Rickon too.

Ser Rodric made it clear to everyone in the Keep that nothing should be talked about aloud, so that the two small boys should not hear it.

Robb was now in the Hall, Theon by his side and both looked at Lady Catelyn's dead body. First the fire broke out and then, when everyone was away, some murderer managed to kill the Lady of Winterfell. Nobody understood it. The Hall was filled and they all looked at the young Lord and then their dead Lady and her murderer.

........  
In the early next morning a Raven were sent to White Harbor with the command to sent their fastest riders and try to stop Lord Eddard from leaving the North. At the same time, the ten best riders on the best horses left Winterfell with the same mission.

Another Raven was sent to Last Hearth with the command to find Ranger Benjen Stark who was on the way to the Wall with a small Group and to make them return to Winterfell. One more Raven was sent to Castle Black at the Wall, with the same letter.

They did not contain the news about Lady Catelyns death but only that it was urgent and really important that they would come back.

The same was written in the letter to White Harbor. Only the riders that were sent directly from Winterfell knew the real reason why Lord Eddard should come back and they had their orders to only tell it to their Lord and no one else.

Robb Stark blinked away his tears when he watched them leave and he hoped that all would soon be here again. They should never have left. Neither Father and his sisters with all the Guards, not Jon with Uncle Benjen.  
..............  
Lord Eddard Stark frowned when he saw five of his best riders that he had left in Winterfell, riding to towards him and the royal treck at a rather horsekilling speed.  
Jory and his other Guards came forward from where they had helped the men of Robert with building up a couple of fires and they too looked irritated when they saw their fellow Winterfellians riding towards the Camp.

Arya came running towards her father and Sansa followed at a much more Ladylike pace with Jeyne Poole and the Septa behind her. From other parts of the Camp more curious onlookers came too.

The riders forced their frothing horses to an abrupt stop barely ten steps in front of Lord Stark and the foremost rider get off his shivering horse. It was Joseth, thinner than normal even and shivering nearly as much as his and the horses were doing.

"Joseth, what total madness had driven you.." but before Eddard Stark could even finish his sentence, the man collapsed and his hands grabbed desperately the Lord's fur cape. The exhausted rider tugged on them and the Warden of the North bowed slightly forward to free his furs from the guards hands, when in that moment the rider bowed forward too and mumbled into his Lords ear of Lady Catelyn's death.

Eddard Stark shoved his clearly mad guardsman away from himself and Joseth fell completely down to the earth. The other exhausted riders had meanwhile also managed to get off their horses and another stumbled forward to help the fallen companion to his feet.

The Warden of the North looked at them doing so and Joseth asked for his Lords forgiveness but as soon as he was standing again, he opened his jerkins and tugged out a sealed letter which he then gave to his Lord.

Ned Stark frowned when he saw the grey wax and the Stark seal in it and he opened the letter hastily.

Father  
Mother has been killed and the murderer tried also to kill Bran.  
He had an Valyrian Dagger.  
Come back father, with Arya and Sansa and the others, Come back.  
Robb

He felt like then, like when he received the news about his father and brother being killed by the Mad King, he felt like he did when he promised his dying sister, he felt breathless and like a part of him was dying too.

Everyone was staring at the suddenly whitefaced Warden of the North and the still shaking riders and horses that stormed to the Royal Camp barely a few minutes ago. Arya tried desperately to steal the letter from her father's hands and even the proper Sansa tried to look into it. The guards that had accompanied their Lord from Winterfell went slowly forward to care for their just arrived fellow guardsmen.

From somewhere the loud and heavy and tall King arrived with one of the Kingsguards behind him. From a different way came the Queen with her brother and her children and their guards.

"Ned, what happened. You are white as this damn snow here. Ned. Ned?"

Eddard Stark did not answer the questions or his King, instead he leaned forward again and whispered to his rider and said man answered the same way back. Then the rider stepped backwards and Lord Stark turned around to his children and before either one of the Girls could even utter a word, they were both embraced by their father.

Then Ned Stark let go of his daughters and told his best friend that the whole Household and all Starks would go back to Winterfell.

Neither the King nor Lord Starks oldest daughter liked to hear that kind of news.  
.............  
A good twenty men from White Harbor met five newly horseless Stark Men in the middle between the Barrowlands and White Harbor.

The last of the Stark Guards was just finished with the sad task to tug his saddle from his dying horse. The other four barely alive anymore horse bodys were laying nearby. Ser Marlon Manderly was the foremost rider of the small Manderly force and he looked towards the gruesome scenery with a heavy frown.

"Hey there Stark Men, what are five of you here with dying horses.?"

One of them, an older man answered that five of their companions were riding and still searching for their Lord but that these five horses could not keep up with the hard and fast pace anymore and just broke down, even though they had tried their best to help the horses, they all just broke down and couldn't be forced up again.

When the Manderly man asked for the cause, the Stark man answered that surely the Manderly's had received a letter from the young Lord Robb and that they, the Stark Men themselves had sworn to their young Lord to only tell more to their Lord Eddard.

Ser Marlon nodded and accepted that, for Lord Wyman had really received a letter last night in which Robb Stark gave command to search for his father and wrote also that he had sent his ten best riders after his Lord Father too.

Ser Marlon and his men had started their ride fittingly in the hour of the Wolf last night, barely two hours after the Lord of White Harbour received the letter. The riders had been careful but relentless and had rode through the night as their Lord Wyman ordered them to. They had hoped to find the Royal treck or the Stark riders the following day and were thus now satisfied that it happened already earlier.  
........

Ranger Benjen Stark, his nephew Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister and the whole rest of the group were found by Umber outriders three days away from the Wall. At first though, neither Jon Snow nor his Uncle wanted to return to Winterfell right then and the Lannister dwarf really wanted to go to see the Wall. Then though, a new single Umber rider came forward and gave Ranger Stark a letter from Castle Black, that the Umbers had received barely half a day ago and after Benjen Stark had read the letter from Lord Commander Mormont, he agreed and thus the two Starkblooded and the Lionblooded made their way back, accompanied by ten Umber riders, while the rest of the group made their way towards the Wall with six more Umberriders helping them.  
Tyrion Lannister had more or less not been asked for his opinion but had been forced to accompany the Stark scions.

.............  
In the end, the Stark family could watch the horrible situation that happened in the South without any real reason that could force them into it. King Robert Baratheon and his former fosterbrother had parted ways in anger from the Kings side and sadness from Lord Eddards side.

The Wars of the Stags in the South were only just the beginning though, more came from the East and finally from the utmost North too.


End file.
